We easily associate typefaces with a particular moment in history, or an entire era, and there’s typography that forever refers to a specific place. Gill Sans + London comes to mind, and other examples abound. Although in the case of Gill Sans, we associate it with the place because of the way it’s been applied to London, not because of where or how it was created.

And so I’m wondering about typography that comes out of a place, somehow derived from highly specific geospatial coordinates. Can a typeface be created from a corner of a room, or from a particular building? (Is geotypography a thing? It should be a thing.)

Back in 2010 I created Ding Dong, an amusing sketch for an alphabet in Venice, and I drew Divietoin Rome in 2011. In each case, something vernacular and of the place (local, casual, conversational) inspired me to create letterforms. In Venice it was the doorbells, and in Rome a particular street sign. I treat these chance finds like evidence — inspirational cues to the language and history of the place, embedded in the culture of the street. I’ve discovered that creating these alphabets is an essential part of my work in a place. The find is like a scrap, or a cell, and I grow something from it.

These alphabets tie the work to the place, and refer to my presence in the place.

I’ll use it for Weymouths and then make the OpenType font available for free download.

I love this idea of geotypography, and in this case I want to go further and call it geohistoricaltypography. Perhaps this opposes the Modernist idea of “timeless” design (think of Helvetica and the ability to associate it with anything, anywhere). Stetson is of a highly specific dual-spatiotemporal moment — it locates itself within the original photograph (late-nineteenth century New England), and more importantly, in the shed — with me, on January 11, 2012. From this grows something new.